


Curiosity

by Garrae



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2237187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garrae/pseuds/Garrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never liked that t-shirt. But suddenly it's becoming his favourite. Fluff. Characters belong to ABC and Marlowe</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Past Imperfect

# Chapter 1: Past Imperfect

She’s wearing his t-shirt.  _His_ t-shirt.  His old t-shirt that he thought he’d hidden well enough at the very bottom of the pile in the closet that she’d never find it.  He never wanted her to find it.  _He_ never wanted to find it.  It doesn’t fit.  It’s two sizes too small for him and he has long grown out of superhero t-shirts (at least where anyone might see him in public).

He actually has no idea why he kept this one.  The others have happy sentimental value: the one he’d worn when Black Pawn accepted his first book; the ones he’d had when he’d been happy at school, or another lurid tale published in the school magazine, when he’d been working in vacations and needing to think no further than the pull and play of teenage muscles.  All those ones are still in his closet, too, but on the very top of a noticeable pile where Kate can – and does – find them and borrow them and wear them around him with almost nothing – sometimes absolutely nothing, those are… interesting… times – else on at all. 

She looks damn good in those t-shirts, and feels even better.  He knows when he sees her in nothing but those t-shirts that she’s feeling playful and mischievous and teasing, and that she will shortly slither up to him and twine her arms around his neck and kiss him, and then he’ll catch her up – because he loves proving to her that yes, he really is big enough to pick her up and carry her and toss her on to the bed (or the couch, or lay her out on his desk) - and investigate the contents of the t-shirt slowly and carefully and in detail.  He loves it when she wears his t-shirts.  He loves sliding his hand up the exposed length of her leg till she wriggles and presses against him; he loves how the soft, sloppy cut falls against her form and moves as she does, revealing and concealing in turn.

_This_ t-shirt is entirely different.  This is not a t-shirt full of good memories and happiness, ratty from long use and comfortably stretched and pulled.  This is a t-shirt that’s practically pristine, worn precisely once and never again, imbued with sadness and remembrance of times past, times lost.  This is the t-shirt that he’d worn standing in the middle of Grand Central Station, listening as the only girl who’d ever walked away from him told him – gently, it didn’t help – that she was leaving.  He’d never had a hint of it.  His Kyra, support, encourager, lover – gone.  And he, left standing there after she’d kissed him goodbye, in this t-shirt that he’d bought the day before from some cheap stall down on Canal Street because he’d thought it was appropriate: Peter Parker and Clark Kent, and a caption _My alter ego’s a superhero_.  Cheesy, but he’d liked it at the time.

And now Kate’s wearing it, with an expression that suggests very strongly that there’s not a stitch of clothing underneath.  Or at least she’d had that expression.  It’s currently running off her face like paint from a watercolour left in the rain.  This is still all so very new, and she knows something’s wrong but she doesn’t know what it is and she’s pulling back and shutting down and _oh shit_ she thinks it’s her.  Correction.  She _knows_ it’s her.

“Where did you find it?”  He didn’t mean to add that unhappy tone, either.  Kate’s eyes flash with answering, disconcerting, upset.

“In the closet, just like where I find all your t-shirts.  Is there a problem here, Castle?  I thought you liked it when I wore your t-shirts.”  Uncertainty is bleeding through her voice as she looks at him.  She’s turning away, through the study, back to his bedroom, closing the door.  Shutting him out, or herself in.  Walking away. By the time he gets there the t-shirt is on the floor, and the bathroom door is closed and, when he tries it, locked.

This is not a good start to a weekend on their own.

He picks up the t-shirt and sits down on the bed, burying his face in the cotton.  It smells like Kate.  She must have put it on straight after her shower, and it’s absorbed the scent of her bodywash.  It doesn’t wash away the memory.

The bathroom door unlocks, and Kate emerges, wearing her own silky tee and jeans, still looking deeply uncertain.  Actually, Castle realises, she looks deeply hurt.  Not that she’d tell him that.  He’s hurt her.  She knows something’s wrong, she doesn’t know why, and she’s jumped to the conclusion it’s all her fault.

“Kate…”

“ ‘S okay.  I shouldn’t have borrowed it.”  He can see the next sentence rising in her throat. Sure enough… “I’ll not borrow them again.”  She hasn’t even come to stand, or sit, beside him.  “I’m going to get something to drink.  Do you want something?”  She’s turning away, walking away.  Just like the last time someone wore this t-shirt.

“Don’t go away.”  Something in his tone hits her.  She stops, hand half out to the door.

“What’s up, Castle?”  Uncertainty and hurt is turning to concern.  She turns back.

“I like you in my t-shirts.  You can borrow them any time you like.”  A swift smile, heavily tinged with leer, flickers across his mouth and disappears again.  “It’s just this one.  I don’t like this one.”

Kate sits down on the bed next to him and puts a tentative hand on his knee.  Castle turns his face into her and hugs her hard, hiding his face in her neck, t-shirt forgotten beside him.

“What’s wrong with this one?   The design’s a bit second rate, but compared to most of them it’s practically new.  Did you grow out it before you wore it?”  Castle winces.  That’s inadvertently painfully accurate.  Mentally, precisely so.  He presses further into Kate, who brings both her arms up round him and holds him close, patting him consolingly on the back.

“Why don’t you like it?”  She picks it up, looks it over critically.  Her gaze snags on the label.  That’s interesting: this one’s a larger size than the others.  Castle must have been a bit more filled out.  Older?  Her detective instincts twitch.  Castle’s still nuzzled into her shoulder.  Instinct and training take over.  Slightly older.  Utterly miserable about it.  Only two options, really.  Kyra, or Meredith.  A small flame of jealousy takes light.  He’s _hers_ , now, and she is not having him moping over other women.  Especially if it turns out to be that red-headed, irresponsible idiot.  Not that she’d be dead keen on it being Kyra, either.  Even if Kyra is happily married and not interested in Castle at all, any more.  She doesn’t share.  She’s certainly not sharing Castle.  Oh no.  They’ve wasted quite enough time with other people – dead-end relationships – that she is not having memories of them get in the way.

“If you don’t like it, why did you keep it?”  There’s a miserable mutter into her shoulder.  “Why, Castle?” 

“I-thought-she’d-come-back.  But-she-didn’t.”  Kyra, then.  Meredith’s been back and forth like she’s on elastic ever since Castle got rich and successful.  Well, that elastic can just be snapped.  Maybe it’ll slap back into Meredith’s expensively Botoxed face.  Anyway.  She doesn’t need to worry about Meredith.  And she’ll just make damn sure that Castle stops moping over Kyra.  Oh yes.  She pushes Castle gently off her shoulder and backwards so he ends up flat on his back sprawled across the bed, his legs dangling over the side, looking both miserable and confused.  Well, she is going to _fix_ that.  Oh yes.  By the time she’s _fixed_ it there will be no room in his head for _anything_ let alone memories of other women.

Beckett acquires a feral, predatory look that terrifies Castle.  He’s no idea what she’s planning, but he’s surprised himself, never mind Beckett, (she doesn’t look like a _Kate_ right now, she looks like bad-ass Beckett, and he thinks he’s her prey) with the strength of his upset and emotional reaction to the memories that this particular t-shirt has revived.  Or re-animated.  Zombie memories, dismembering him.  It’s perfectly possible that Beckett is intending dismembering him, not at all metaphorically, for spoiling what they had intended to be a _very_ private weekend.  And it was he who’s spoiled it. 

Beckett is still regarding him with that terrifying expression.  When she stands up, he’s sure she’s walking away from this scene.  He is, therefore, considerably surprised – to the extent he can manage through the cloud of old, stale misery – that she moves round, pushes his knees apart and stands between his legs.

“Look.  At.  Me.  Castle.”  He does precisely what he is told.  The bite of authority takes control of his brain and leaves him obedient to her will.  Half a second later, when her hands slide slowly over her torso from shoulder to hips, smoothing her top over her breasts in a way that leaves simultaneously nothing and everything to his imagination, he doesn’t need obedience.  That virtue has been completely replaced by the vice of lust.  The result is precisely the same.  His eyes are riveted to Beckett.

She doesn’t say another word.  She slides her tongue smoothly over her lips, and her fingers to the button of her jeans.  As her tongue retreats to safety, the button also slips out of sight.  Castle gulps.  The zip opens, slowly.  Beckett smiles sharply.  Her hands move to her hips, and her thumbs slide under the waistband.  The jeans drop an inch.  She licks her lips again, and brings her hands around a little more to the front.   Another inch, then two.  Her thumbs are now sliding down the front of her hipbone.  Castle draws in a hard breath and starts to lever himself up.  Beckett leans over and shoves him back down.

“You don’t move, Castle.  You stay right where I put you till I tell you you can move.”

The jeans drop further.  Castle can see the edge of lace clearly, now.  Blue, today.  Parts of him are beginning to feel rather blue, too.  And not the parts that felt so earlier when he first saw that t-shirt, either.  That had been his brain.  This is considerably lower down.  Isn’t torture illegal under the Geneva Convention?  Maybe he should draw up some rules.  The Broome Street Convention.  Rule One: no torturing Castle.  Beckett’s thumbs are skirting the edge of some areas that he was intending to pay delicate and persistent attention to, this weekend.  In consequence, the jeans are reaching the point of no return – ah.  There they go.  _Ohhh_.  He likes that view.  All five miles of legs.  And he’ll like the view at the top of them, though disappointingly it hasn’t yet been revealed.

He likes it even better when Beckett slowly divests herself of her t-shirt to reveal the other half of the blue lace.  This one is pulled taut over her breasts and is not concealing her erect nipples in any way at all.  He’ll play with those later.  Soon.  Now.  Rule Two: no telling Castle not to touch.  He has another try at sitting up.  Beckett glares and suddenly places one knee very precisely on his thigh, where a movement of an inch would incapacitate him.  It’s clearly a warning.  He lies back down again.  Quickly.  The knee leaves.  Rule Three: no threatening Castle.  He’ll impose these rules.  In his dreams.  Beckett’s not notably keen on him imposing rules.  Well, except… ooohh yes.  Except.  His miserable mood is quite gone.

And then she picks up that t-shirt.  She looks at it with a victor’s smile, satisfaction edging every one of her excellent lines – and puts it on.  Castle’s jaw drops.  His good mood is leaking back out his ears into the sheets.

“What…what are you _doing_?” 

“Shush.  No talking.  No moving.  You do _nothing_ till I say you can.”  Her tone reverts to that spine-straightening command-voice.  “ _Look.  At.  Me._ ”  He does.  “Look at _me_ in this shirt.”  She moves with the boneless flexibility of a large cat – a panther, perhaps, perfectly midnight black and perfectly lethal – and the bra drops to the floor.  She needn’t say anything more.  Castle’s back to being riveted to her body.  She did that without revealing anything.  She didn’t need to.  His imagination hits turbo-charged overdrive.  He realises his breathing is hoarse and choppy.  He’s painfully aroused.  And he is fully dressed and Beckett is – not.

“What do you see in this shirt?”  He can’t answer.  He’s too busy trying not to whimper.  Eventually he forces out a word.

“You.”  She nods once, sharply.

“That’s right.  You see _me_.”

And then she slides her hands up under the t-shirt and _oh oh oh_ the hem lifts but not as far as Castle would like and the only thing in the world at that moment is Kate Beckett who he loves, and the t-shirt  that he hates, and her panties dropping to the floor.  He can’t move.  He can’t think. 

“What do you see now?”

“You.  Just you.  Please, Beckett, come here.”  She smiles diabolically.

“No.  I want my dinner.”  She slinks to the door.  Castle’s eyes don’t leave her ass for a second.  Knowing she’s wearing absolutely nothing under the t-shirt is killing him.  “You coming, Castle?  I’m hungry.”  Oh God.  He is hungry.  He is starving.  But it has absolutely nothing to do with food.  Rule Four: no stopping for dinner.  In fact, Rule Five: no stopping.  He struggles off the bed and follows.

Beckett is rootling in the kitchen cabinets looking for plates and not incidentally stretching just enough that the edge of the hem is perilously close to the swell of her ass.  She can feel Castle’s hot, intent gaze on her.  But she is by no means finished with him.  Thinking pitifully about past girlfriends?  Well, she is _still_ not having that.  There’s only one woman he’ll be thinking about.  Now or anytime soon.  Well.  Now or ever.  She can sense him sneaking (ha!  Castle can’t sneak.  It’s not in his nature) up behind her.

“Get back, Castle.”  There’s a disgruntled whimper.

“Ka-ate.”

“Go and sit at the table.”  She hears him comply.  She stretches again, and listens with satisfaction to the indrawn breath.  Almost a gasp, really.  “What do you see, Castle?”  It’s an order, demanding not requesting a reply.

“You, Beckett.”  That’s right.  Beckett.  Hard-ass Beckett, in command.  She’ll bring Kate back later, when he’s … reprogrammed.

“Wearing?”

“My t-shirt.  You wearing my t-shirt.” 

“And?  What else am I wearing?”  That’s definitely a gasp.

“And nothing else.  Come here, Beckett.”

“No.  I want my dinner.  Aren’t you hungry too, Castle?”

Dinner appears on the table.  Castle is almost clinging to the chair to stop himself simply hauling her up and on to the counter and ignoring eating dinner in favour of devouring Beckett.  But he knows that when she’s in this mood disobeying her is not a good plan.  In other moods, now, it’s she who obeys, and they both like that too.  But that’s not for now.  Right now, he’s looking at Beckett in a t-shirt that had had only unhappy memories but which is rapidly acquiring some connotations that are anything but unhappy.  She’s sitting down opposite him, smirking, and that is simply _unkind_ because he’d had some plans for running his hand on to her knee and up her leg and round to that amazingly silky-soft skin at the tops of her inner thighs and teasing her as she’s teasing him _oh shit_ what is she _doing_?  Her bare foot is sliding over his pants and up over his knee and his thigh and he hadn’t exactly recovered from the sight of Kate Beckett letting her underwear fall and now she’s making sure he doesn’t and _ohhh_ her toes are almost as wicked as her fingers. 

He catches her foot before she can withdraw it and scrapes a hard fingertip over the arch and watches her wriggle and her eyes widen and darken, follows that up by running his hand over her ankle.  She touches her tongue to her lips and smiles wickedly.

“See something you like, Castle?  Tell me what you see.”  He knows what she’s doing.  He knows that she’s sometimes jealous.  He loves that.  He loves knowing that Beckett, bad-ass, hard-ass, all-round alpha female, can be jealous of other women.  Not that she has any need to be so: there’s no-one else for him.  But it produces such very interesting results.  This time, it looks like she intends the result to be a very different memory of this t-shirt.  It’s already working.  He should, he supposes, be just a little concerned that he’s so easily dispossessed of a trigger to such a critical memory.  But all he can think about is that he has Beckett’s ankle in his hand and that if she were only next to him he’d slide his hand all the way up her leg and _not stop_ and that’s Rule Six: Castle gets to play.


	2. Present Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He never liked that t-shirt. But suddenly it's becoming his favourite.

# Chapter 2: Present perfect

 “I see you, Beckett.  I see you naked under that oversize t-shirt.  I see you swirling your tongue over your lips and I see your eyes dark and your mouth wet and I know what you want.”  He smiles lazily, and strokes the ankle he’s still holding.  “Even if I hadn’t watched you, I would know that you’re not wearing a bra, just from the way your breasts press into the t-shirt, the outline of your nipples.”  He watches colour limn her cheekbones.  “Even if I hadn’t seen them fall, I would know that you’re not wearing panties, just from the way you walk, the slither in your cadence, the fluidity of your movement.”

Beckett placidly eats her dinner.  The high colour along her face gives her placidity the lie.  She makes certain to let her tongue swirl around her fork where Castle can see it.  His eyes are midnight-dark, focused on her.  When the meal is done, she slides off her chair.

“I put it out.  You clear it up.”  Castle smiles very slowly. 

“Sure.  Just sit over on the couch and wait.  I won’t be long.” 

And he isn’t.  But he _is_ long enough for Beckett to recover all her game and remember what the purpose of this evening has become.  When he arrives at the couch she unfolds her legs from under her, slowly and elegantly, examining their satin length and their lack of any covering; stands up and slithers over Castle, kissing him far too briefly for his taste.  His arms automatically come around her, a hand on the nape of her neck, the other on the curve of her hip, pulling her in, trying to gain some – any – control.

Naturally, it doesn’t work.  It never does, when she’s got a plan and intends to be in charge herself.  And her plans are always very, very acceptable.  She’s wriggled out of his grasp before he’s had a chance to start exploring the contents of that t-shirt, which is rapidly rising through the ranks of his favourites and is already hitting the top five.  He pouts at her, which has no effect at all except to make Beckett grin evilly.

“Bedroom, Castle.”  He looks hopeful.  “Stand by the bed and wait for me.”  Not so hopeful.  He essays a grab for her and gets his fingers smacked for the attempt.  She doesn’t make him wait for long.  Just as well.  His patience is strained.  Bit like his pants, really.  Which Beckett has clearly noticed, from the satisfied smirk on her face as she prowls towards him.  She undoes his shirt buttons, slowly, kissing as she goes.  Then the evil succubus stops, and stands back.  That’s not fair at all.  What happened to Rule Five?  He reaches for her, and receives only a growl of disfavour in response.

“Tell me what you see, Castle.”  This again?  He knows what he sees.  Beckett, two inches out of reach, wearing some old t-shirt of his that he wants to see decorating the floor not covering Beckett, and wearing _nothing else_ , smirking like the Cheshire Cat and not letting him pet her.  Or stroke her.  Or anything.  Where’s Rule Six when you need it?

“You, Beckett, teasing me.  Wearing _my_ t-shirt and nothing else.  Come back here.”  She doesn’t move.

“Tell me what you see, Castle.  You’re the writer.  Describe it.”  Which is another way, he supposes, of saying _Talk dirty to me, Castle_.  He can do that.  Oh yes.  He likes this game.  He always likes this game.  Beckett’s reaction, the first time, to him talking dirty to her was a revelation.  If he’d known _that_ when she came to his reading, way back when he killed Storm… things might have progressed a lot faster.  A _lot_ faster.  She likes his voice, as well as his mouth.  He drops into full, smooth, wicked tones, dark treacly molasses coating her, there to be licked off later; deep distilled desire settling into her and leaving her – he knows – hot and wet and ready, squirming in the seine net of his words.  Oh yes, he _likes_ this game.

“What do I see?”  That’s more like it, Castle.  The sable baritone is perfectly pitched to set synchronous vibrations running down all her nerves and to pool them between her legs.  “Your hair, long and loose, curling down around your wide, darkened eyes; contrasting perfectly with the soft white cotton of the shirt you’re wearing.  Your hair, waiting for me to run my hand up into it, to hold your head so I can take your lips and explore your mouth and taste you till you start to rub against me.  Your mouth, just a little open, promising more, just a little glisten where you’ve slipped your tongue over your lips because you want me there.  Your lips are red, no need for gloss.  Your face is telling me in every detail that you want me.”  He runs his eyes a little south.  The hot, dark gaze is exactly what she wants to see.  No sadness left.  Oh no.

“The t-shirt is too big for you.  It’s slipping over your smooth shoulders, not soft enough from use and washing to mould over your breasts.  But you’re so excited that it doesn’t conceal your nipples.  Your breasts, waiting for my hand, my mouth.  I’ll tease, and play, and you’ll gasp, and moan, and curse at me because it won’t be enough, because I won’t take the shirt off.  You’re wearing it, and you’ll stay wearing it, and everything I do to your breasts will be through the barrier of that shirt.”  Her eyes are impossibly dark.  “It’s my t-shirt, and you’re my bad-ass Beckett inside it.   What do I see?  I see you.  I see the t-shirt barely covering your ass, an inch or two below indecency.  I see your smooth legs waiting for me to run fingers up them, over your knee, over your thigh, across your hip.  Under the hem of the t-shirt, Beckett.  When I do that, I’ll find you open and wet and ready for me.”

She takes an unconscious step towards him, and Castle reaches out and draws her in, moulds her against him, runs a hand into her hair just exactly as he’d described; glides the other over her back, pressing the cotton into her, ending on the delicate swell of her ass, still the right side of the fabric.  He tips her head back to angle her mouth properly, and nibbles teasingly at her lower lip.  He’s still surprised how readily she opens to him, how quick and heated her responses.  She’s taken his mouth in an instant, her leg rising round him and pulling the t-shirt tight under his hand and he knows that as soon as he moves that hand the fabric will rise and he’ll touch and she’ll start to make those little nearly-moans that he loves so much.  So he shifts his hand and slips it over her raised leg and over the outer line of her quads and round to find that silky skin: so far, but not far enough for Beckett.  She pushes against him, moves to bring his hand where it should be, tracing through the soft wet folds: but he’s alive to that trick and won’t play.  She growls gently into his neck, pushes his shirt away and nips him; wriggles her body over his and follows with a delicately scraping, questing hand to open his pants and push them away too.

He descends backwards on to the bed, one controlled motion, still holding Beckett and taking her with him, so that she’s above him, straddling him, gravity his ally to bring her against his hardness, moving against him to try to bring herself friction and reduce him – them both – to gasping incoherence and noise.  No.  He rolls them over and props himself on his elbows, balanced in the vee of her legs and exerting just enough pressure that she can’t writhe.  Yet.  She will.  Oh yes.  She’s teased him long enough and it’s _his turn_ to make her desperate.  He bends to her breast and does precisely what he threatened: palms and moulds and rolls and plays through the t-shirt – why did he ever dislike it?  It’s his favourite t-shirt right now – until she’s panting and moving beneath him and trying to order him around and he grins widely because she always wants to be in charge and she’s been in charge all evening so far and now she’s not.  Much.  So he puts his mouth to her and draws each hard nipple between his lips and teeth and scrapes just a little and nips just a little more and then sucks to soothe it and then harder and _that’s better_ she’s moved from panting to almost-moan and _now_ he’ll have some fun, amusingly laced with revenge for the way she’s teased him since before dinner.

He rolls off, traps one slim, elegant leg between his, slips his hand over her to open her more widely to him and draws soft, unfulfilling patterns over her inner thighs, gradually getting closer and closer to where she’s trying to drag him.    When she tells him, only slightly impeded by an inability to force out more than one syllable at a time, that if he doesn’t touch her properly she will break both his legs (didn’t she say that once before?  She didn’t do it then, either, and he’s called her his _muse_ a few times since.) he gives her a bit more of what she wants: traces fingers definitively through her folds.

“You like that.”  He strokes a little harder.  She emits a noise.  “You’re soaked.  All for me.”  He strokes again, pausing at her entrance and sliding a fraction inward.  She emits a more demanding noise, and pushes against his fingers.  Her own hand flickers over him and extracts a noise in turn.  His fingers may be wicked, but hers are hardly snow-white pure themselves.  She traces the broad outline, strokes along the rigid length, grips firmly and slides up and down, foreshadowing what she wants.  He groans.  Beckett smirks, swiftly removed when hard fingers drive into her, thrusting and curling and _oh God_ he knows just how to reduce her to molten and _Castle_ he’s rubbing his thumb over all those so-sensitive nerves and she’s lost her grip on him and _ohhhh_ her focus on anything but his hands and then she loses her grip on everything. 

He plays her body so _well_.  Virtuoso Castle.  Maybe she should insure his fingers.  And his mouth.  And one other bit.  Which, now she’s returned to life, is making its presence firmly known.  And that was _not_ an accidental word choice.  Oh no.  Not at all.  She should greet it properly, since it’s been kind enough to show up again.  Or still.  Or some more.  She thinks she knows Castle well enough that she can greet him with kisses.

Half a second later Castle is back to being flat on his back with Beckett sitting firmly astride his legs and looking rather interestingly predatory.  He knows he’s the prey.  The only question is whether she kills him _before_ she eats him.  To which the answer turns out to be _no_.  Though his butterfly writer’s mind remembers that the outcome of this game is called the Little Death.  So maybe he’s been eaten and killed.  Should that be killed and eaten?  That might happen too.  If he’s really, really lucky.  And then he stops thinking useless thoughts and gives himself over to the hot touch of her mouth and her delicately evil fingers and who cares which way round it was anyway?

She’s still wearing the t-shirt.  He doesn’t care.  He’d prefer she wasn’t wearing anything at all, just like somehow he’s not wearing anything at all, but he’ll settle for this.  She’s squirmed back all the way up over his previously lax body, which is currently leaving it anything but lax, and is nibbling at his shoulder, fortunately without anything more than a very gentle scrape of teeth.  The squirming has left that damn t-shirt all rucked up, which means that some very interesting parts of Kate – she’s currently soft enough to be Kate again, which may not last – are flush against some very enthusiastic parts of him.  He doesn’t want flush against.  He wants tight around.  Well, that’s easy to solve.  He pulls her upward so he can kiss her properly and have her in just the right place.

Kate properly rearranged, he kisses her for a while, just to ensure that everything’s back in full working order, and to lull her into a thoroughly false sense of security that she’s still in charge – the way she’s invading his mouth she seems to think so – and then flips her over and thrusts in and presses down – and pauses.  He’s had enough of the t-shirt.  He reaches down to its hem and wrests it upward, lifts Kate slightly with an arm under her neck, hauls it off over her head and throws it out the way.  He doesn’t care where it lands.  She shouldn’t be wearing t-shirts.  She shouldn’t be wearing anything.  And then he moves and she moves and they find the hard, fast rhythm that always works for them and it really doesn’t take long at all before they’re cuddled up together, mutually satisfied.  At least, Castle is.

Right up until Kate sits up, locates the crumpled t-shirt on the floor, crawls over him and retrieves it.  And then she puts it back on.  No.  No no no.  She shouldn’t put it back on.  She should stay right here, or possibly in the shower, but she doesn’t need any clothes on at all.  He tries to pull it back off.  Kate holds it down.  Castle pulls it up.  Kate pulls it down.  After a couple more go-arounds Castle gets fed up of the game and does something he rarely tries: exerting his full weight and strength to keep Kate still while he gets his own way.  Amazingly, it works.  Not at all amazingly, Kate doesn’t appreciate it.  Vocally.

“You don’t need it on.”  She growls in response.  “I’ve got the point.”  More growls.  “You’re cute when you’re jealous – _ow_!”  His ear moves in ways that ears are really not supposed to move. 

“I am _not_ jealous.”

“Liar,” Castle grins.  “You are _too_ jealous.”  He grabs her hands before his ear is actually removed from his skull, flips her down on to her back again and holds her there, kissing her gently and then working his way round and down till she’s stopped arguing and started encouraging. 

“Still jealous, Kate?” he murmurs as he laps his tongue around and over her breast.

“Not jealous.”

“So I can stop proving you’ve nothing to be jealous about?”  He lifts his head.  He realises that was a mistake very quickly.  _Ow, ow_.  Ears are _not_ meant to be used as a steering wheel.  _Ow_.

“You never needed to prove I had nothing to be jealous about because I wasn’t ever jealous.  But you can make up for your grievous error in judgement by _not stopping_.”

Castle smirks.  Fortunately Kate can’t see him.  Far too much disbelief in his face to ensure his survival.  However, stopping is boring.  Starting again is much more interesting.  He licks a wet line down Kate’s sternum and then stomach and then veers off to nibble a sharp hipbone.  She needs to eat better.  Not that her figure isn’t _fabulous_ , but she’s stretched fine.  He stops digressing and moves to the main subject: reminding Kate that he can undo her in seconds flat.  It doesn’t take much: fingers pressing into soft wet folds, running up and down and teasingly just a fraction in and out; followed by mouth and tongue and wicked little circles hitting every nerve ending and then when she’s incapable of speech he moves above her and she’s open under him, pulling him closer, and he slides slowly in and fills her; slowly out again, slowly in; till she wraps her legs around his waist and moans and claws at his ass and he speeds up and touches the tight bundle of nerves and she cries out his name and shatters.  He gasps out her name and comes himself.

When he wakes up she’s wearing the damn t-shirt _again_.  She must have slept in it.  She really does want to drive his memories out his brain.  He knew she was jealous, and it’s still cute.  She’s cute, still asleep and sprawled all over the bed.  How does someone so tidy all day get so messy when they’re asleep?  She’s hardly left any room for him.  It does have some advantages, though.  The view is very nice.  He has an excuse to snuggle up to her.  And seeing as he’s snuggled up to this excellent view, it seems a shame not to play with it.  He doesn’t often wake up earlier than Kate, and he feels this is an opportunity not to be missed.

He traces down the lean lines of her body, stroking lightly over the cotton, watching as she curls into his touch, not awake, nor quite asleep.  He whispers in her ear.

“Admit it, you were jealous.”

“Wasn’t.”  She turns over and smiles.  “Should I be?”

“No.  Never.” 

“So are you going to keep this t-shirt?”

“Oh yes.  It’s my favourite.”  He pauses to tug it off.  “It’s my favourite floor covering.”

**FIN**


End file.
